Our "goto" place for all things office and home is IKEA. The store in Stoughton is close enough that we can go there for a $0.99 breakfast, do some shopping, and still get back to the office to put in a full day. OK...a "full" day is a relative term. At any case, we found something so cool at our last IKEA outing that we felt we needed to spread the word. It is the $20 IKEA LED Solar desk lamp.

A desk lamp is an useful item, but as a computer puts out quite a bit of light during use, even at night a lamp is not usually needed.  However, there are times when having one is helpful. Like reading hard copy materials.  For the times when we do go analog, a small portable desk lamp like the one we found at IKEA is perfect for the job.

The desk lamp is cordless because it is solar powered.  The bulb is made of a bunch of super-bright white LEDs.  The head is on a flexible arm.  The solar panel/rechargeable battery module pops out for convenient placement anywhere (window, desk, deck, etc...) there is sunlight.

The light cone produced by the LED is bright but confined. It was definitely bright enough for reading, but will obviously not light up a room.  One of the benefits of LED bulbs is they are very energy efficient.  Unlike conventional bulbs, most of the electricity used is converted to light instead of heat, making the LED bulb bright but still cool to the touch.  The side-effect is LED bulbs also tend to last a long time, typically for the life of the lamp.

So if you need some spot lighting for the occassional reading of analog material, this IKEA Solar desk lamp will fit the bill nicely. We wish we could have purchased an additional solar panel so we could have one charging at all times, but we didn't see the solar module for sale as a separate item. For now, our suggestion is to leave the solar module by a window to charge and pop it into the lamp only when needed.   [Permalink] - IKEA LED Solar Lamp